The politics of starting with the problem

There is a revealing difference in political style emerging between Keir Starmer and Andy Burnham – and it goes beyond personality alone.

Health Secretary Yvette Cooper has now offered a useful description of how it is perceived at the very top of government. Speaking to Political Currency, she said Starmer’s approach was to ask ministers to “bring me solutions, not problems.” Burnham, by contrast, operates differently: “With Andy, it’s like ‘hang on, bring me the problems … I want to hear about the problems, and I want us to work together in solving them.’”

These few words paint a very clear picture of the difference between the two and the root cause of the struggles of Starmer’s government.

READ MORE: ‘Everyone or no one: what Burnham must understand about minority Britain’

Progressive politics, in many ways, starts from the diagnosis of problems.

Before there can be a solution to Britain’s housing crisis, the pressures on the NHS, insecure work, stagnant living standards or the state of our public services, there has to be an understanding of what people are actually experiencing.

For too long, politics has often appeared to work the other way around. Politicians arrive with an answer, announce it, and then explain why it solves a problem that voters may not recognise in quite the same terms. The result can be a sense that Westminster is talking at people rather than with them.

Hence, the consistent messaging the populist parties like Reform and the Greens have tried to tap into has largely consisted around the idea that politicians do not listen to you.

Burnham’s simple approach of asking ‘what is going wrong, and why?’ has the potential to act as a dampener to the populism Starmer struggled to contain.

Leading from a position that places importance on encouraging people to bring the problems to you, creates a point of connection with voters who have become tired of feeling that politicians either do not understand their frustrations or are unwilling to confront them. It also creates a connection with Labour members, who want to feel that the party is engaged with the reality of the country rather than simply managing it from a distance.

In contrast, Starmer’s emphasis on solutions being brought to him could, at times, make him appear remarkably unwilling to intervene in the face of enormous problems. Britain’s challenges are simply too large to be dealt with by waiting for the solutions to arrive and then choosing how to manage them.

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The country needs someone who is consistently willing to get under the bonnet: identifying the problems, driving the argument and relentlessly asking what the government could do about them. Delegating the search for solutions and then managing those responsible for finding them was never going to be particularly inspiring as it felt too uninvolved.

The so-called “Burnham bounce” is, in part, about a politician who appears hungry to engage with the mess rather than pretend it isn’t there.

But acknowledging problems is only the beginning.

Burnham will need to demonstrate that his approach produces solutions and that these are being implemented. It is not enough to keep saying that everything is broken and that he wants to help. The danger is that identifying problems without solving them simply creates a more sympathetic version of the same frustration.

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This is particularly important when confronting Reform, Restore and the wider far-right narrative about what is causing Britain’s problems. Labour cannot defeat that argument simply by telling people their frustrations are legitimate. It has to show, through actually dealing with those frustrations, that the far right’s explanation of their causes is wrong.

The political opportunity for Burnham is, therefore, considerable. Start with the problems. Listen to them. Understand them. Then, the hardest but most important part is to be consistently making some undeniable progress in the effort to solve them.

That is the type of politics that can maintain the Burnham bounce, and even deliver another resounding general election victory. 

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